


Halo

by olndina



Series: Tissue [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America, MCU, The Avengers
Genre: Asexual Natasha Romanov, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, M/M, Multi, Platonic Life Partners, Recovery, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-10
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23571574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olndina/pseuds/olndina
Summary: This picks up right after Dropped and the end of the events of CA: TWS.  While Dropped was very Steve-centric, this one is Clint's story.Clint works his ass off to bring the Winter Soldier in from the cold, but James Buchanan Barnes makes it really fucking hard.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Phil Coulson & Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton/Steve Rogers, Clint Barton/Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: Tissue [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1696525
Kudos: 21





	Halo

Clint doesn’t really do hospitals.

Oh, sure, he’s been in hospitals a lot...well, hospital-adjacent anyway, or whatever you wanna call S.H.I.E.L.D. (seriously, though, fuck S.H.I.E.L.D.) medical as a patient, but sit in a hospital room with the smells and the plastic chairs and the beep-beep-beep and the  _ smells _ ? Nah, man. Fuck all that noise.

There are two people in the world (universe, whatever, fuck aliens too...except for Thor and maybe Sif… definitely fuck Loki, but not, like,  _ actual sex _ fuck Loki) that he’ll sit beside a hospital bed and count the number of rise-and-falls per minute, and the other one’s gone to get coffee… supposedly the good kind.

And Clint definitely is not freaking out about if Steve is going to wake up because Clint’s been sitting here for a damn long time, enough time that the novelty of watching Steve’s bruises fade and his cuts stitch up has well and truly worn off. It’s a question of  _ when _ Steve is going to wake up, and he really shouldn’t be alone when he does because he’s going to be cranky as hell, exhausted, and worried out of his damned mind all at once. 

Blah, blah, blah, Clint’s great love is lying unconscious in a hospital bed after his previously-thought-to-be-dead-best-friend-j/k-actual-soulmate tried to kill him, but Clint is bored. So, yeah, maybe he is lying on the floor looking for each of the Avengers in the fissures of the ceiling tiles (he’s found all of them except for Tony, the wily bastard) when he sees the tile to the left of Steve’s bed  _ shift _ .

It’s important to know that when it comes to poker, Clint literally has no poker face, a fact that both Nat and Steve have ribbed him about since they started playing Texas Hold ‘Em to divvy up chores. When it comes to actual spy shit, hell, he could beat Phil Hellmuth. He therefore  _ does not _ give away the fact that he knows that Bucky Barnes is lowkey hanging out in the hospital’s ceiling and has used his knife to make a ceiling fissure just big enough so that he can creep on his unconscious soulmate. Steve’s not going anywhere anytime soon, so Clint figures that Barnes isn’t going anywhere anytime soon either, just the same that Clint knows he himself is not going anywhere until Nat (or, hell, he’d take Wilson at this point in time) gets back. Clint's perfectly free to keep searching for Ceiling Tile Fissure Tony all while he starts hatching a plan; he just needs to wait a little bit before he pulls his phone out and looks up little league baseball fields in the area.

* * *

It’s Wilson who finally shows up, and Clint really wishes it had been Nat because a) Clint wants coffee and b) he still hasn’t forgiven this Falcon dude’s whole “you stop him” shit. But needs must, and this hospital floor is uncomfortable as shit and Clint’s got places to be.

“Yo, Wilson.”

“Fu - Barton! What the hell are you doing down there?” Wilson stoops to pick up his phone from the ground. While Clint hadn’t intended to scare the shit out of the guy, it certainly had been satisfying.

“Looking for Tony Stark.”

Wilson straightens up and just stares at Clint, maybe waiting for the punchline. When it doesn’t come, he just shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m not gonna ask.”

“Meh, your loss.” Clint stretches, relishing the joints cracking as he regains his footing. “Listen, man, are you sticking around for a while?”

“Planned on it. Why? You going?”

“Yeah. I gotta take a shit and a shower.”

“Are you always this gross?”

“Nah. It’s just for you, Sammy-toes.” Clint plants his ass back in the visitor’s chair and pulls his boots out from underneath. He makes a show of sniffing his socks and wincing at their pungency before he dons them and his boots. He’s just finishing tying up the second boot when he looks back up at Wilson. “Hey, did you know that the second oldest little league field built in the area was the home of the Little Devils?”

Sam, still standing, just gives him the same look as before. “Okay… there a reason you know this and are now sharing with me, Barton?”

“You just look like a man who’s interested in baseball, that’s all. Didn’t you know that a love of baseball is required if you’re going to be a part of Steve’s Sassy Sidekicks Sassing Steve? We’ve got shirts, you know.”

“Uh huh.” Wilson sits down in the chair on the other side of Steve’s bed and shoots a look at the door. “Don’t you have shit to do or - ”

“To  _ take _ , my friend. I have a shit to take.” He stands up and leans over Steve’s form, placing a kiss on his forehead as he whispers “I love you.”

“What do you want me to tell Steve when he wakes up?” 

“Oh, right.” Clint sends a wave of apology and maybe just a little bit of sheepishness along his link to Nat, not only for the coffee he is going to miss, but for also for the fact that he’s about to do something stupid. “Tell him that bit about the Little Devils, and tell him I said ‘drop dead sprint.’”


End file.
